Former Tiser-ite Paula Bender e-mailed to say that her favorite mango bread was one she recalled from some years ago with the intriguing name of "Hunky Bunch Mango Bread."

I delved back into The Advertiser files and never found the recipe — that showed up in an online search — but I did find out who the Hunky Bunch was.

It was the family of the late Dr. Hing Hua "Hunky" Chun and his wife, former legislator Connie Beltran Chun. Theirs was a second marriage and each brought three children to the union — Hunky's three boys and Connie's three girls. In the 1970s, when Papa Chun decided that it would be a great family-building exercise for the eight of them to run together in the Honolulu Marathon, they got tagged with the name "Hunky Bunch," a play on TV's "The Brady Bunch."

Reached at her Foster Village home, Connie Chun explained she would bake as many as 80 loaves of the bread and serve it with homemade liliko'i juice as a post-run snack for runners in various races. It was a standard recipe that she changed around to suit her tastes. She's got three mango trees in the yard and a freezer full of mango right now, but, she said, "I haven't baked mango bread since my husband died (in 2002) because I know I'd cry."

Hunky Bunch bread freezes well and makes good toast.

FAMOUS HAWAIIAN HUNKY BUNCH MANGO BREAD

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 1/2 cups granulated sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons cinnamon

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 cup grated coconut

1/2 cup raisins

2 cups fresh mango, diced

3 eggs, slightly beaten

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

3/4 cup vegetable oil

Prepare four loaf pans (2 1/2-by-5-inch or larger) by buttering them or using nonstick spray.

Fill prepared pans two-thirds full and bake at 350 degrees for 55 minutes for the smaller pans or 1 hour for the larger pans; tops should spring back when touched and a toothpick should emerge from the loaf's center clean.